Sarasota County aligns with city, nonprofits on homelessness

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly paired the funding amounts and contracts approved Tuesday. Instead, the commission approved $194,000 for the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness and $272,600 for shelter beds at the Salvation Army.

SARASOTA — Years of contentious arguments and infighting about whether to build a new homeless shelter quietly ended with no fanfare or debate Tuesday afternoon.

The Sarasota County Commission unanimously approved a new rule that prohibits homeless individuals from camping outdoors and allocated more than $466,000 in funding for a new homeless services system and Salvation Army shelter beds.

In combination, the new rules and funding effectively codify the county's major responsibilities in the latest plan with the city of Sarasota and nonprofits to combat chronic adult homelessness throughout the Sarasota and Manatee area.

That plan, produced last spring by the Florida Housing Coalition, calls for government-funded beds to be available at the Salvation Army on 10th Street as the de facto emergency homeless shelter for the area and creates a new infrastructure to funnel those people into local nonprofit services and, eventually, housing programs.

The simple series of votes before an almost empty County Commission chambers Tuesday stood in stark contrast to the more than five years of near-constant and often bitter arguments between city and county leaders about whether and where to build a new homeless shelter. Now they and the local nonprofits are officially working together on the same plan.

"It’s hard to believe after many, many years of this issue it basically comes down to a very quiet public hearing," County Commission Chairman Paul Caragiulo said after the votes.

New funding, rules

The funding approved Tuesday includes $194,000 in support for a rebuilt Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, which is the official Continuum of Care organization in Manatee and Sarasota that facilitates federal funding for homelessness programs.

The report produced earlier this year called on the partnership to take a larger leadership and administrative role in the two-county effort and directed it to oversee a new “coordinated entry system.” The new system is a standardized database for each of the dozens of nonprofits, police, shelter and government agencies that work with the homeless. It replaces the individual systems each group traditionally has used that sometimes complicated their ability to help refer clients to the various services available.

The county funding is an increase over its usual $112,000 contribution to help with the added responsibilities and entry system under the new plan, County Homeless Services Director Wayne Applebee said. The city of Sarasota also is contributing an additional $82,000 this year and the foundations are collectively adding an extra $164,000, he added.

The biggest procedural change will be through a combination of the new county prohibition on living outdoors and $272,600 in funding to reserve 30 additional beds at the Salvation Army to be used as safe emergency shelter spaces for homeless individuals. The city of Sarasota already funds 20 such beds there, so the county's addition will satisfy the housing coalition's recommended 50 total emergency shelter beds.

The county's approval of both the new rule and beds will give Sheriff's Office deputies — for the first time when the rule takes effect in March — the ability to make those living and sleeping outside choose between going to the shelter, where they would interact with social workers who could try to help, or potentially face arrest.

The intention is to create a new way to make those chronically homeless who have refused services interact with the new coordinated entry system through which they could receive help, treatment and eventually housing — with arrest as only a last resort to try to urge those individuals into the safe shelter space, officials have repeatedly said. But the commission could not implement the prohibition that makes that possible unless it provided emergency shelter beds — the root of the years of infighting — which it now does at the Salvation Army.

"This isn’t meant to be heavy-handed, but this is meant to deal with a very, very small portion of the homelessness population that just will not voluntarily engage with services," said Commissioner Charles Hines, who has long advocated for the change. "Our goal here is to move people from being homeless into some type of level of service they need to try to get them back into society, if possible."

What's next

The decisions Tuesday opened a new chapter in the fight to curb homelessness as much as they close the chapter of the fight about how to do it.

Sheriff Tom Knight has estimated the new county rule will require an additional $540,700 to establish two new, specialized teams for the homeless. He plans to create one north county and one south county team, each with a deputy and a mental health professional, and a sergeant to oversee the new unit that closely mirrors the Sarasota Police Department's existing Homeless Outreach Teams.

Those teams will need training on how to interact with those individuals, many of whom deputies already know through previous encounters, and how to implement the new rule's specific language, Knight has said. He is scheduled to present those issues to the County Commission later this month.

Knight and county officials plan to phase in those new teams and Salvation Army beds over the next several months, alongside work on the coordinated entry system.

The county also plans to share the new outdoor lodging prohibition with Venice and North Port, which do not have such an ordinance, in the hopes they would adopt the same or similar rules to essentially standardize the law across the county.

"People are ready for us to do something different that has a better noticeable result, so hopefully that's what we've delivered today," Applebee said.

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